My students last summer had never heard of Jim Crow.

U.S. Government is not an area in which I can claim expertise, but when I applied for a summer job with Duke University’s Talent Identification Program—a camp for academically gifted middle- and high-school students—someone in hiring thought my few years’ study of American history and religion qualified me to serve as a teaching assistant for American Government: Practical Politics. A few weeks after receiving my college diploma, I arrived in Durham, armed with notebooks, The Federalist Papers, and all the youthful optimism and energy we twenty-year-olds are supposed to possess.